Green travel onboarding – An exploration of the environmental value co-creation in tourism transportation online platforms from the millennial's perspective

Abstract: The carbon emissions from tourism transportation have been a significant environmental issue. Studies have tried to investigate the impacts of sustainability initiatives provided by tourism transportation on travellers, but the target group and the types of transportation are limited. Therefore, the thesis aims to understand the environmental value co-creation process of sustainability options provided by tourism transportation companies. Specifically, the thesis investigates perspectives from the millennials and includes tourism service providers such as online travel agencies and transportation companies. The data collection includes two focus groups, eight semi-structured interviews and document analysis to collect data and answer the research question. Interviewees were asked about their experience while booking tourism transportation and their concerns while making purchase decisions. The digital platforms from the selected tourism transportation companies would be shown to the interviewees to understand their willingness to engage or not and the reasons behind it. The results showed that several factors influence whether travellers would engage in value co-creation, including knowledge, awareness of environmental impacts, resources, the influences from travel pals, and social and political structure. Value co-destruction would occur under several conditions: awareness of sustainability options, negative feeling, information mistrust and lack of information. This thesis contributes to the theoretical and analytical points of view to service management to further understand the customers’ perspectives on sustainability issues in the tourism industry. A further investigation on cultural aspects and meanings in tourism transportation for specific groups such as generation Y and millennials would be appreciated.